I've realized: I write to be somewhere other than where I am. Over the years, I've found my favorite non-where to be is Bluffton, a little town in the Driftless Zone of the Upper Midwest. Whenever I'm here, I'm there. Come visit.

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Monday, March 27, 2006

A long, long time ago, when there were wolves in Wales, and I was very, very young, I took a foolish, foolish job. I was in theater at the time and working in Philadelphia. I acted, directed, did any gig I could get. Philly is close to New York. So close -- a hundred-plus miles -- so that those with bright hope and talent eventually went from Market or South Streets north to Broadway or the Village. Those who stayed behind -- or came back -- were either sad failures or the passionate but utterly uninitiated of us. That was the assumption.

...Okay, Andre Gregory was in Philly, but that's another story...

The well-heeled theater-going public of Philly pretty much ignored local efforts and hopped onto the Jersey Turnpike or Amtrak'd their way up to NYC to ease their showgoing Joneses.

I had just graduated from the theater school of Temple University and was considering my next step. Steps. I was married and had commitments to family, city and friends. That's what we told ourselves, Ernestine and I. Excuses, I fear, for not doing things.

Directing was the only thing I really wanted to do. If not that, then, nothing! Problem was, as an unknown in Philly, you were an actor. That was it. When people got to know you, then you got to direct. An ancillary problem was that anybody who had theater gigs to hand out and who didn't know you assumed you were either one or other of the abovementioned -- sad failure or hopeless naïf.

One could always start a company of course. That meant devoting yourself to fundraising, handshaking, butt-kissing, record keeping, the thankless pointlessness of audience building, and its sister shame, press relations/marketing...all that and more.

I had no urge to start a company. No, no. I was a director, not a businessdude.

Understand: I was not kid. I was young, but was not a child; I was just out of school, but had knocked around in professional and were-professional theater for more than a dozen years on three continents. I had some underdeveloped and largely unrecognized talents and some talents that had already been recognized -- just not so anybody in Philly had recognized.

An old chum from Temple HAD started a company. Fritz was his name, Etage was the company. That’s French for "stage" -- that was Fritz. Fritz was producing and directing a play from a new script by another Temple chum, a guy named Ivan. I was asked by both producer and writer to play the lead in what was to be Etage's first effort, "Terminal."

Fritz lived and worked in a vast, dark, ratty warehouse. The building was probably from the tail end of the 19th century and butted, literally, to the docks and lay in the shadow of the Ben Franklin bridge. The show would be rehearsed, built and performed in what amounted to Fritz's living room, said room being some 150 feet long, about 40 wide and 20 or so tall. It was big, dirty, echoic and open. Not bad, actually, as rough theater spaces went in those days. Brick, nitre and hoarfrost; tiny little feet when the lights went out. All the stuff to keep you honest and not let you get too far above yourself.

Ivan, our writer/money guy, had been around. He had just graduated from Temple, and, like I, he was older and more experienced than most of the students in the department. Ivan, in fact, had quite a few chops as a record producer and rock'n'roll promoter. At this time in his life, however, Ivan was seeking “respectability.” He somehow assumed the mantle of "playwright" would bestow that upon him. Silly fellow.

Toward that end, he had written "Terminal" and was using rock and roll bucks to finance the effort.

Trouble was, "Terminal" sucked. Cavernously.

The first read-through showed the script needed an act III gut rehab, a new act II, and an actual act I -- just to get it all rolling. That was it. Not re-writes. Needed were Acts I, II, and III.

It also needed reason to exist. It was the worst sort of absurdist masturbation: seemingly intellectual and passionate while being neither intelligent nor heartfelt – and it didn’t even give a good tingle at the end!

It did provide opportunities for boy and girl actors to scream, cry, fight, cuss, agonize, head-bash, breast beat (on one’s self and others), it allowed for perversion -- real and imagined -- and offered a full range of options for face-making, funny-walking and gutteralizing the English language.

The cast featured mostly kids, kids just starting at Temple or elsewhere, or street kids who'd learned a few garage band rock and roll licks or had done a couple community theater gigs before becoming disillusioned because their parents actually LIKED the shows they’d been in. Most of us had drifted down to the docks under the big suspension bridge to Camden, to do something real, something meaningful, something that reeked of sweat and tasted of gut, something that explored meaninglessness and showed how tough they were, alone, and in the face of it all.

Like I said: Kids. Like we all were, once.

I was assured. The script would be fixed. This was a starting point. This was a framework. Ivan was there. Fritz and Ivan, with the cast, would take it apart and put it all together. We’d be okay. Really.

Never happened.

I rode through five weeks of rehearsal, sometimes enduring the passion, the sweat, the committed anger of the young and needy actors, sometimes not. All the while I worked against my growing and deeply dismal realization that this play had begun life as a piece of shit, it remained a piece of shit, and would for all time and forever be a reminder -- imbedded in my recollection and in the memories of all who would gauge my work from this monument from this time forth -- that I, too, had shit potential.

To my credit I walked out once.

To my discredit, I came back.

About the play: “Terminal” was set in a deserted and devastated air terminal. Was the devastation because of a war, social upheaval, some apocalyptic event?

I was playing "The General." The guy who ran things, the guy who had to keep it all going. I had at my command a sexy blonde babe and her pal, a hunchbacked circus dwarf/baggage handler. The actor playing the dwarf, while short, stood well within "normal" height range. He didn't believe in "faking" anything on stage so his dwarfishness and the huched-back part of his performance would have to come out of his intense "search" for his character in the rehearsal process.

A few other human oddities worked for me in this place. I've forgotten them, now.

As with a lot of Hollywood movies from the 30s, 40s and some early live television that had been cribbed from Hollywood movies of the 30s and 40s, there were also a few travelers that showed up at this strange facility. These were people who suddenly found themselves in this terminal. “They’re waiting, see...?”

Anyway. I had a lot of speeches. Long speeches. I got to roam the playing area -- I climbed to the rafters on scaffolding, chasing my dwarf, I crawled the floors like an agonized serpent, or a uniformed Caliban sans-fins. I oozed up through trapdoors -- which were real -- rats and bugs at my heels -- also real. I wandered among the imagined audience-to-be no doubt making people nervous that I was going to make them do something silly (assaulting the audience was big in those days).

I got to deliver one very gentle, very soft speech while standing over our sleek blonde flight attendant, Lisa (heroin-chic before there was a Calvin Klein) -- while slowly slipping both hands down the front of her dress, finishing the thing while kneading her exceptionally chic-to-imaginary breasts...

You had to have been there.

All right? I was embarrassed by almost everything I had to do in this show. I had, however, committed to doing it. Ah well.

Opening night. Of all things, we had a full house. It was packed. Mostly paper, but it was full of Fritz's family, chums, the cast's pals, guys from Temple, former teachers. The range.

I told my wife to wait...wait until it settles in...

Uniquely, I was not nervous. I usually have stage fright that pushes the edge of cardiac infarction. That’s when I care, of course.

About this... Well, I wasn’t nervous. The rest of the cast went through the usual backstage verbal, physical and psychological hoop-jumps, the stuff that makes being backstage early a the run feel like you’re in the waiting room at a vet's office.

Ivan had pulled strings. He'd gotten a whole mob of his rock'n'roll pals and associates to Philly and to this thing. Most disturbing of all, the press was there -- the Daily News, Inquirer, Daily Planet, all the local and out of town papers were covering this little event!

Shit. I was finished.

I did the show stops pulled. Balls out. Hannibal Lector on a buzz trip, bennies, downers, uppers, screamers. Shameless. Shameless.

Somewhere in there, I lost myself. Somewhere in the midst of it all, I dropped off the face of friggin' Philadelphia and into some other place. I don't know if it was Ivan's Terminal, but it wasn't Etage under the Ben Franklin bridge.

Then the thing was over. We took our bows and got ready to party.

I came up for air, changed out of the costume -- my old Air Force officer's uniform (I say it was my old "officer's uniform" because, while I was but a Sergeant in the USAF in Europe, my officially designated work uniform was that of an Air Force Captain. I'll explain that another time) -- shoved my hair back, slipped upstairs from the basement green room and joined the party. Maybe nobody'd notice.

I avoided my fellow Terminalites. By this time, I didn't much like them, and they were, mostly, afraid of me.

I grabbed a dozen 7-oz Rolling Rock ponies, and slipped into the front lobby where it was quiet and dark.

Sulking.

The party was a muffled headache away. I snuggled over by the window that looked over the street, the dirty street by the River, and sucked down a couple Rocks.

Ahhh. Good.

I had no idea she had arrived. I turned and there she was. She was funny looking, bony, angular. She was in a kind of combination hip-hop, shimmy shammy, snuggle-up twitchy state. It seemed focused on me. She stood inches from my face and gushed. Her head wig-wagged back and forth as she oozed about my...my performance....one foot, the other foot. I was really, oh man you gotta know but probably don't know because you were so far in it there, but you really gotta know what you did there and I want to tell you you were just mind-blowing, man, fucking great. Like fucking THAT great.

Her eyes gripped mine, held through all her twitchings, rockings and bobbings. Somehow her eyes...her eyes locked onto mine...her eyes never moved, lidded, sexy, sensual...despite it all...they hung on...she vibrated...here eyes were quiet, waiting...that was it...then she waited with...waited with...waited...with her eyes.

"Thank you," I said. I thought that was appropriate. Thought that was about right. "Uh-huh... thanks. Glad you enjoyed."

No. I didn't think, "enjoyed" was the word, not the kind of thing "Terminal" was about... Enjoyment. No.

Then she slipped away.

I was flattered.

A bit confused. I was taken by this funny person's ability to flow in and out, go with the mood and be gone with the music beating at the walls from inside the theater.

"Well, okay," I said to myself, "how bad could I have been?"

How bad could I have been?Fluffed with myself, I went back to the party.

When I got back, my dwarf and chic Lisa (who, since the first week of rehearsals seemed to have become joined at the groin), snatched me into a corner. Asked what she had said, what had she said...?

“Who?”

“Patti for Christ-sake.”

“Who Patti? Patti who?”

“Patti Smith, Christ! What had she said?”

“Oh. Uh...she liked it.”

I had no idea. At the time (and to this day deep inside my soul of souls) I consider any music written after1850 to be the spiritual precursor to the fall of civilization, Armageddon's marching tunes.

At this time, Patti Smith was only a step beyond being a proto-punk poet and crypto-neuve-wavo journalist cum Sam Shepard fuckee from deepest New Jork City.

She had, however, just cut a first record. She was a growing legend. Noted and known. And (best of all) known in only the hippest circles. Which, of course, most certainly did not include me.

My "Terminal" colleagues -- in the hippest of circles -- could scarcely believe that I didn't know who she was. Some proclaimed me to be feigning a greater ignorance than that which I possessed.

Terminal got lousy reviews.

I got a few good ones -- of the "one bright-spot-in-this-dark-and-dismal-night" variety.

...and that was that.

I watched Patti Smith with some interest after that. Then I forgot her.

In recent years, I've listened. I've come to appreciate her. I like her work. I like thinking about her. I've seen her, since. Actually gotten her autograph -- been that close. I never said what I wanted to say: "Hi. I'm Larry Santoro. You're a big fan of mine." I'm glad I didn't.

But! I wish her enthusiasm at the time had given me an appreciation of me at the time.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

I suppose it's because I'm still in awe of Alan Clark's wonderful painting for "...North of Nowhere" but I've been thinking about illustration lately.

My wife's father, William White, was a wonderful painter and illustrator. We're lucky to have quite a few of his pieces on our walls--what's left of our walls, that is, after book- and dvd-shelves have had their way with our vertical surfaces. One of my favorites is this...

If you look carefully at the bottom of the mirror -- just to the right of the center bulb -- you'll see a man's face staring at you. That's Bill White painting the picture.

Some day this painting will be a story. I'll get it right...I really will!

For obvious reasons, I love this one as well...

See? Every year, Bill painted a portrait of his little girl. This is one from her late 20s. She'd just returned home from Canada and was an unhappy woman... But I love her face in this. I love her hair. I love her...well of course.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Middle American Debris by Alan M. ClarkAlan Clark's cover illustration for my first novel, "Just North of Nowhere," due out in late '06 from Annihilation Press.

"Just North of Nowhere" will be Bluffton in print -- finally!

Alan is one of the best in the business and I'm pleased as hell to have his work fronting this book. This is the second piece of mine that Alan has illustrated. Take a look below...the image on top of the entry "Where Did It Come From?" That's his illustration for "So Many Tiny Mouths."

As this place is called "At Home in Bluffton," I suppose you realize that Bluffton has been in my head and heart for a decade or so. Middle American Debris -- Alan's job title for the painting -- is a central image of "The Ninth Goddamned Kid," a key chapter of the book. So there it is! I can see it at last and I can't wait for you to read it!

Hell, I can't wait to read it!

Take a look at Alan's website: http://www.ifdpublishing.com/art/ ...he's got a lot of incredible work there.

Friday, March 10, 2006

This is me going down the spiral stairway into my back yard. My writer pal Wayne Allen Sallee seems to love taking pictures from above or below, looking up people's noses and the like. By request, I took one of him on this same stairway a few years ago. It looks as though he's descending into a sewer or down a steel rabbit hole. He uses it as the image on his business cards.

The planter and trellis are no longer there. Instead we have fountains and faux inlaid stone. I didn't do it. I don't own the place I just live here. I've lived here, in fact, longer than I've lived anywhere in my life. This is about 100 feet from the spot where the little girl's body was found during the razing of an old three-floor wood frame building. She became "Little Girl Down the Way."

Friday, March 03, 2006

My experience has been that when people ask, “Where do your ideas come from?” they really don’t want to know.

For instance: Eight years ago I wrote a story called "Little Girl Down the Way." I submitted it once and it came back. I wasn't surprised or disappointed. "Little Girl..." is a brutal story about the murder of a 7 year old who lived and died -- 40-plus years ago -- just down the way from my apartment in Chicago.

Her passion and death happened decades before I moved into the neighborhood but the Little Girl’s remains weren't unearthed until 9 years ago. The facts of the matter stirred me to write a story in which an unwanted child is hidden in a basement by her mother and, ultimately, is killed by her. The story is seen from the point of view of the little girl who, every day, awakens into the hell of an afterlife and re-lives the nightmare of her life and death. Day after day the years of torment are revisited but never does she give up on the notion that her mother loves her. The story, finally, is a view of how hell and heaven can be the same place in the same time depending on your point of view.

Unpublished, un-circulated, “Little Girl…” was content to live in my trunk. It had lots of company.

A few months ago, "Twilight Tales" asked if I had something they could produce as a podcast for their online magazine. I gave them a choice of one thing or another thing.

They chose the other thing: "Little Girl..." The producer, David Munger, did a great job with a difficult piece. Here's the url...go listen to it, I'll wait for you: http://www.twilighttales.com/podcast/

Okay?

A short time after it was 'cast, I got a letter. A listener who wrote to say that the story disturbed him -- in the good way that horror should disturb you -- and that, as a father, he’d listened to it several times and found himself both moved and trembling each time.

I thanked him for his kindness and for taking time to write. In return, I gave him a few paragraphs on the background to the story -- just a bit more than I gave you above.

A return email said, in essence: Well! I'm sorry I know that, I thought this came out of your head!

He included a little electric *sigh* somewhere in there -- vexation I guess at finding my murdered Little Girl to be a child of the world not entirely of my imagination. The father in him didn’t want to know that such things happen.

Okay, his disappointment was my fault: I volunteered the information. I guess I understand but see, I think people really don't want to know where the ideas come from.

So, if you've listened to "Little Girl..." would you want to know how close to reality that piece was?

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About Me

Started writing at 5. Won a playground storytelling contest at 8. In my 50s I got 2 nominations for the Bram Stoker Award by the Horror Writers Association. In 2001, my novella "God Screamed and Screamed, Then I Ate Him," was first. In 2010, I was named Best Narrator for 2009 by the StarShip Sofa in Great Britain.
In 2002, I adapted and directed an audio version of Gene Wolfe's "The Tree Is My Hat." The show had Neil Gaiman in the cast and the script was my second Stoker nod. Fun, but not as much as the playground contest.
As associate producer of the "Hyde & Seeke" tv series, I wrote, directed and supervised production throughout the show's first season. That was fun.
In 2003, "Catching" was Stoker Recommended and received Honorable Mention in the Annual YEAR'S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR antho. "So Many Tiny Mouths" was so-mentioned the next year.
My first novel, JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE; was published in 2007. A mess of fiction will be out in 2010...much of which is still being written. Look for DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME.
I live in Chicago and am married to Tycelia, the love of my life. That’s the ultimate fun!